An image capture device (e.g., digital camera and digital camcorder) typically includes a sensor (e.g., a complementary metal oxide sensor (CMOS) or a charge-coupled device (CCD)) to capture the image. The sensor is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that stores and displays data for an image in such a way that each pixel in the image is converted into an electrical charge the intensity of which is related to a monochrome color. With millions of individual sensor units used in a typical digital camera, it is very probable that the sensor often contains defective sensor units sporadically dispersed throughout. These defective sensor units may provide a full on or off signal that causes noise in the corresponding image.
To compensate for the defective sensors, one conventional noise reduction technique is to replace a color of a defective pixel with a color of an adjacent pixel. Another noise reduction technique is to replace the color of the defective pixel with an average color of adjacent pixels. A limitation with both of these conventional noise reduction techniques is that the defective pixels cannot be next to each other because the replacement color directly corresponds to the color of adjacent pixels. For instance, if two defective pixels are next to each other, and the replacement color for one of the defective pixels is based on the color of the adjacent, defective pixel, then the replacement color is also defective.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need to provide methods and apparatuses for reducing noise in an image that has defective pixels next to each other.